


Pup

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hurt Bruce Wayne, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Damian Wayne, Sickfic, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: It was Damian alone who sat on the floor in the hall outside Father’s room.Bruce has a bad night. Damian tries to fix it.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Comments: 80
Kudos: 549





	Pup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DawnsEternalLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/gifts).



Father did not do well with narcotics. Everyone knew this. He did not do well because he refused to take them, and then when the need must met, the dosage required was sickeningly high.

Damian had been there when disaster had struck like a scorching bolt of lightning on an otherwise sunny day. He had watched the miscalculation, the overextension, the way Batman’s face had drained of all color as his patchwork back had given out. It had taken Nightwing’s aid just to guide him to the car.

Damian could count on one hand the number of times Father had allowed himself to be medicated. This time was worse, because it had been Pennyworth’s choice, not Father’s. Which was necessary, he supposed, since Father had insisted he was fine when he couldn’t stand, let alone walk, but where was Pennyworth now? Where was Richard? Where was Todd or Cain or Drake or Brown?

Nowhere to be found.

They would come if called, to be sure, but shouldn’t they _be_ here?

It was Damian alone who sat on the floor in the hall outside Father’s room. Yes, Pennyworth had set up a baby monitor on the end table next to the bed, but it was Damian who listened within reach. Perhaps it was because none of them were Robin. When Nightwing had arrived in the alley, or when the others had appeared next to the car in the Cave, it had been to help in a situation already in progress. Damian had been alone when he had knelt next to Batman’s rigid body.

He didn’t want to think about that now. Damian let out a long, slow breath and tried to recenter himself. The books at his knee had been a decent diversion initially, but now he wanted to work on his meditation. He took in another breath and worked on centering his core. The sounds from the room kept tugging at his attention.

Father did not do well with narcotics. Even when he needed them, his body fought them, like Titus escaping a bath. His rest was always agitated when drug-induced, uneasy and fretful when he most needed to be still. That was the most comforting thing about Father, his stillness. It always felt purposeful and deep.

Damian could hear the rustling of bedsheets from where he sat in the hall, and it was like the creeping skitter of danger in the underbrush. Each shift felt like hair raising up beneath his skin, tight and prickly.

A low groan tumbled from the room, like a corpse rolling to a stop. Damian gritted his teeth. It wasn’t a noise meant for attention. He doubted Father was even conscious enough to know he was making it. At the second groan, Damian opened his eyes and rose to his feet.

“Father?” he called softly, toes just over the line of the threshold. There was no answer, just the restless stirring from the bed.

Damian huffed and returned to the hall. Gathering up his supplies, he carried them into the bedroom and placed them on a chair that he dragged next to the bed. The book light he had been using was placed on the end table next to the monitor, and the lamp was turned on.

Father’s profile was illuminated in bas-relief. Even in sleep, his forehead was furrowed, dark brows scrunched together. His mouth was closed but twisted into a grimace. It couldn’t be pain. The dosage Pennyworth had administered would numb a meta. Nightmares, most likely, or muddled impressions of sleep too obscured to be scary but no less anxious.

Damian frowned, considering his options, then reached over and turned the baby monitor low. No need to wake Pennyworth. Damian climbed into the beside chair and placed the pile of books in his lap. Father groaned low again. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth looked deeper in the shadowed light. They were different from the lines Damian was accustomed to, the rare ones that appeared when Father smiled. They made him look older, more fragile. They needed to leave.

Though Father would eventually claw his way to consciousness, like a drowning man struggling to the surface, there were tricks to ease his way. Damian glanced at the clock. It was late, far later than he was allowed to remain out of bed. He had known this would be the case before settling in the hall, however, so he had dressed in his pajamas and prepared himself for a sleepless night.

Clearing his throat, he began to read. Damian hated reading aloud, as he found himself tripping over words and slurring his phonemes. It was laborious, so far removed from the ease of reading silently. But this was what Father needed—a voice he could latch onto. Damian was too aware of his defects in carrying a conversation to attempt to monologue aloud. The books he had brought were a varied sort, a mix of short fictions and nonfictions from his own shelf. They were all well-known to him, so he could afford to switch from one to another depending on how Father reacted to the subject matter.

He had been reading for a little over an hour and was in the middle of a Wordsworth collection when Father stirred and murmured, “Damian?”

Damian paused, head lifting. “Yes, Father?”

Father hummed in the back of his throat, then rasped, “Thought that was you.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Wh’t...” Damian watched Father’s throat bob as he swallowed. “What’re you doing?”

“Reading to you. Go back to sleep.”

To Damian’s surprise, he was obeyed. Father’s eyelashes, only half-raised to begin with, fluttered shut. Damian waited, but Father’s breathing never settled into a rhythm that he trusted to last, so he bowed his head and continued to read.

The plan was to read until dawn. Pennyworth’s routine began before the sun’s, so Damian would be safe to sneak off to his own bed by then. However, Damian found himself drooping in the dog watch of the night. It had been a stressful, tiring day, and he was ready to be through with it.

Familiar books no longer able to hold his attention, Damian held himself ramrod straight and began to recite facts, struggling as he did to choose ones that might interest Father’s subconscious. But recitation quickly devolved into the very kind of stream-of-consciousness monologue that Damian had tried so hard to avoid.

“Baby dogs are, _yawn_ , pups, but so are baby bats. That makes us like Titus, doesn’t it? I don’t much like the idea of, _yawn_ , being a baby, but I would not mind being like Titus. Puppies are good even when they are small.”

Damian scrubbed at one eye with his knuckles and slumped back in the chair with another yawn.

“I wish you would not keep getting hurt,” he murmured, weariness at last releasing the final bonds on his tongue. “It is unsettling. I do not like to see you in pain. Mother would say I am weak to flinch from the pain of another, but you... you don’t like to see us injured either, and I don’t think you’re weak.”

He had, at one time. Not anymore.

“Even though I do not like so much when you fuss,” Damian grumbled around another yawn.

That wasn’t true. He did very much like it when Father fussed. Father didn’t cluck and hover the way Richard did. Richard tended to speak through his worries, which was sometimes gratifying and sometimes exhausting. Father spoke rarely, if at all, but he had a way of hovering like a stormcloud. It had taken Damian a long time to notice and even longer to read worry into the hovering. But few things made him feel safer than waking up to find Father by his bedside.

Yet another yawn gripped him, one so long that it stretched his mouth wide and popped his jaw. Damian grumbled and shook himself slightly, like Titus after a tromp through puddles. “Apologies, Father. This is more difficult than I expected. I may resort to reciting lessons from my childhood, if you do not mind.”

He would need something, at any rate. Though Father had ceased his groaning, his sleep was still restless. Damian could see his eyes moving fitfully behind closed lids, chased by some unknown, drug-induced phantasm.

“Damian,” came the low grumble, deep and warm like a hibernating bear.

Damian straightened quickly. “Yes, Father?”

“H’ve you been here ‘ll night?”

“It is not yet morning,” Damian hedged.

Father huffed. He had gone still, aware once more of the heating pad on his back, the pillow beneath his knees, and what they meant. He turned his head, though his eyes remained closed, and the movement was too loose with painkillers, removed from Father’s standard precision.

“Come to bed,” Father said, pulling an arm away from his body to make room.

Damian hesitated, at first expecting the command to be _go_ to bed and caught by the substitution, then worried by the potential consequences. “You sleep better when someone is speaking to you,” he confessed. “Everyone else is abed.”

“I’ll sleep better with you here,” Father assured him. “Come here, pup.”

Cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment and pleasure, Damian set his books aside and carefully climbed up into the bed next to his father.

“This isn’t hurting you, is it?” he asked as he settled down next to his father’s side.

“No,” Father assured him. A broad arm settled against his back, and blunt-tipped fingers dragged gently through his hair. “Thank you for fussing over me.”

Damian closed his eyes with a contented sigh, certain he would be asleep in moments.

He was correct.

**Author's Note:**

> DEL came up with the headcanon that since baby bats are called pups, that's what Bruce would use with his own kids. I was more than willing to help make that vision reality.


End file.
